topic Re: feature service tiling in ArcGIS Enterprise Questions

feature service tiling

Anonymous User — Thu, 08 Aug 2019 14:37:04 GMT

They showed off Feature Service tiling at Dev Conf. That is why Hosted Layers are so fast.

They said it "might" be in 10.7.1. I can't figure out how to publish a tiled feature layer from Pro. Can anyone say if this made it to the shipping 10.7.1 Enterprise? If so where can I read up on it in Documentation? Thanks!

This is the sole reason I pushed for Portal. Dynamic map image layers slow down after more than a few users at once on a heavy layer. Feature layers themselves have never been fast enough to use for polygons or lines. WebGL layers have also not worked due to the WebWorker bug/limit. I am greatly looking forward to feature layer tiling as the solution to build performant sites with high traffic.

Re: feature service tiling

TanuHoque — Thu, 08 Aug 2019 17:14:23 GMT

Dynamic map image layers slow down after more than a few users at once on a heavy layer

Kevin MacLeod‌ I was wondering what is your take on cached map services in your particular situation.

Re: feature service tiling

Anonymous User — Thu, 08 Aug 2019 17:30:02 GMT

Tanu I am not sure that would fit the bill...I have hundreds of services, multiple machines, dozens of viewers. I need to query and identify. They all have all popups on (WAB modification per Robert) and basically I need something simple, straightforward, that makes layers faster for multiple users at once. Feature service tiling looks to perfectly fit the bill and also I can finally leverage some of the new capabilities of feature layers like symbolizing etc. Did feature service tiling now make it in to 10.7.1?

Also I hope we can soon see feature service capabilities from file GDB and allow feature service tiling from file GDB. Because getting out of SDE is often times very helpful to reduce complexity and increase reliability and resilience and portability. I'm thinking mainly of emergency management.

Re: feature service tiling

TanuHoque — Thu, 08 Aug 2019 23:40:46 GMT

Kevin,

First of I really don't know the answer for your question regarding 'feature service tiling'. I hope someone with expertise in that area will chime in. In the meantime please check What's new in 10.7 and 10.6.1 section in the following help which might help you.

Query (Feature Service/Layer)—ArcGIS REST API: Services Directory | ArcGIS for Developers

I was mostly curious to understand why cached map service wouldn't work in your case? You can do both query and identify operations off cached map service plus it will help you draw them very fast even in heavy loads.

But it was your requirement to change symbology from the client side changes the equation. With that I got my answer.

Thanks a lot.

Re: feature service tiling

Anonymous User — Fri, 09 Aug 2019 13:27:28 GMT

Thank you Tanu for your comments. We change symbology in MXDs sometimes. And many of the datasets also change frequently, as they get updated. And how would caching work? If viewers have dozens of layers people may turn on or off or re-order. With caching, would it handle transparency or 'cover over' layers, in the browser canvas, since it is a raster? Also I really don't think that would be feasible, I want users to be able to zoom down to 1:70 in my viewers. The space that would take for our 600+ layers to cache to 1:70... And many of them change often and would need recaching. Overall, my takeaway this year was feature service tiling sounds like the best all-purpose solution. Would be glad to learn though any way I can to have layers load faster when scaled out to heavy load! And if anyone on Enterprise that is working on feature service tiling can chime in whether they are in the shipping version or when (ballpark) they might be coming.

Re: feature service tiling

Anonymous User — Mon, 12 Aug 2019 20:43:12 GMT

Hi Kevin, are you looking for information on how to publish hosted tile layers?

Here are the different publishing workflows, whether from Pro or in portal:

Publish hosted tile layers—Portal for ArcGIS | ArcGIS Enterprise

Re: feature service tiling

Anonymous User — Thu, 15 Aug 2019 18:46:00 GMT

Hi Hilary, no. That's just regular vector tiles, right? I mean the ones where it's a regular feature service, but it's tiled for display purposes. I need popups, querying, etc. It was what they showed at Dev Conf. It's how AGOL handles feature services now on the cloud. But of course, we need it on-prem. They described that it would be tiled in the Portal data store in PostgreSQL.

Re: feature service tiling

Anonymous User — Thu, 22 Aug 2019 00:12:25 GMT

Hi Kevin, thanks for the clarification. This is something that will be in an upcoming version of ArcGIS Enterprise - the exact version is undetermined as of now.

Re: feature service tiling

Anonymous User — Thu, 22 Aug 2019 17:03:44 GMT

Perfect. Just looking for a straight face check to see if I missed or it is still upcoming. Thanks, I'm looking forward to it!

Re: feature service tiling

mpboyle — Thu, 17 Oct 2019 19:57:22 GMT

Hilary Curtis‌,

Is your response referring to hosted feature layers within a Portal Data Store, or feature services published from ArcGIS Server to a federated Portal?

I agree with Kevin MacLeod‌ that polygon or line feature services published from ArcGIS Server are just too slow to draw to support being used within a web map. However, hosted feature layers published to the Portal Data Store are incredibly responsive.

We are a medium sized government agency that supports a pretty good number of GIS users, and if would be amazing if we could just publish feature services from ArcGIS Server and have them available for our users to use in web maps. Most of our users are not heavy editors that need Pro or Desktop, and being able to provide them web maps and feature layers as a way to construct maps, is one of our desired goals...but until published feature layers from Server perform better, that's not a reality.

Before someone mentions alternatives...like caching, or publishing data to a hosted feature layer...that's all well and good, but it requires maintenance, and perhaps a lot of it if you have several or tens of hosted feature layers you want your users to be able to use. Re-building cache takes time and a lot server resources. Overwriting hosted feature layers takes time and both of these options means your data is a snapshot in time until you update it.

Re: feature service tiling

Anonymous User — Wed, 06 Nov 2019 00:42:06 GMT

Hi Matthew Boyle and Kevin MacLeod,

Just clarifying a bit - the benefits of feature tile caching are specific to a few scenarios. You'll notice performance enhancements when you have data that rarely changes and many users querying the same extent at the same zoom level at the same time.

Outside of feature tile caching, recent releases have included optimizations like quantization and pbf that make service rendering noticeably more performant. This session, Best Practices for Layers and Service Types, covers some of those updates.

Matthew Boyle, the workflow you've outlined is a foundational part of ArcGIS Enterprise - if you have some time we'd like to meet with you further to understand how your services are structured and your usage scenarios (we can reach out via direct message if you have availability).

- Hilary

Re: feature service tiling

Anonymous User — Wed, 06 Nov 2019 15:19:22 GMT

Greetings Hilary,

Thank you for the info. I just deployed an update - www.sagis.org/map and the performance is unfortunately abysmal. I am on 10.6.1 Server. It was so abysmal that it took out my entire Amazon instance and I had to hard restart it. After a while it just becomes unresponsive, the entire server. I transferred my address point layer on AGOL to search it as a featureLayer because Searching for addresses was too slow, and it still is slow (literally almost unusable). (there is no ability to have a Hosted Locator; that is a high priority request that would generate revenue) Meantime my operational layers, which I split out between display layers and a twin service to query for widgets, are very, very slow. This has always been a struggle with ArcGIS Server services and performance. I've tested all the various service types. Vector tile doesn't work because I need querying and the layers get updated (roads, zoning, etc Vector Tile Popups ). Feature layers, too slow. Map Image layers are the only ones that have worked. WebGL layers crash Chrome ('too many web workers' bug, was it ever fixed?). I've tried all the strategies: scale dependency, max record limit, pooling adjustments, put everything in web mercator in a file gdb on the server drive, etc from the performance wiki.

However... some of this in your new document (quantization and PBF) is new to me. I am only at 10.6.1 Server.

What was shown at the Dev Conf this year was feature service tiling, is how they referred to it. Basically it looked to be the quantization (simplification of geometry) that Hosted Feature Layers are doing. (by the way; I noticed this on AGOL ... bug: popup outline is mis-shapen in ArcGIS Online but works fine in 3.25 sandbox ) They had said at Dev Conf that Server 10.7.1 or 10.8 would bring this to Enterprise. And however it would work under the hood, it stores stuff in the Data Store (Post db / Portal). As you have indicated above it will be coming to a future release. Hilary Curtis Can you say whether it will be implemented in 10.8.0? I am planning for our next server upgrade; for Q1.

I will discuss with TS to see if there is anything I can do to boost the speed. I don't know what happened, except I added some analysis tools and enabled the Suggest in the Search widget. (Which has its own problems; the current state of Locators is not functional: https://community.esri.com/thread/181310#comment-888896 geocoder Suggestions list in Search should not contain addresses that don't exist ) In tests everything was fine, but it is not standing up to the level of traffic now that it is deployed ( www.sagis.org/map)

Hilary - is PBF only for static vector tiles or can it really be used for feature services? What exactly is it? I might just upgrade my Amazon Server to 10.7.1 from 10.6.1 as soon as this weekend since the current state of the site performance is untenable. It is odd because it's sporadic, it works great on my machine and not on my boss's machine.

I have WAB 3.12 and API 3.28 coming from 10.6.1 Server though. It appears that by default, out of the box, WebApp Builder is using dynamic services (i.e. map image layers as they are now called) How do I test using the new snazzy feature layer quantization from 10.6.1 with my site? I will enable featureserver on my layers and begin testing. I saw this thread https://community.esri.com/groups/web-app-builder-custom-widgets/blog/2018/05/15/enable-webgl-feature-layer-in-web-appbuilder-de-28 and will test this.

Another question... if you vector tile a map service with 20 layers in it, and turn sublayers on and off, can you "see" through them? The previous paradigm of caching was all or none, it cached the way it was displayed in Arc and then it was frozen. If I have streets, zip codes, zoning, etc and other polys and vector tile them, the sublayers will act like true sublayers right? All of this I would say is germane, as any and all questions above from me are solely efforts to boost REST performance.